Monday, January 7, 2013

Reflections in a Golden Eye

REFLECTIONS IN A GOLDEN EYE

______________Queer ReflectionsThe Prussian OfficerThe Young Orderly______________QUEER REFLECTIONSIN A GOLDEN EYE “The sense of the Awfulwhich is the desperateblack root of nearly all significant modern art”—Tennessee WilliamsPreface to ReflectionsIn Golden EyeIt was done the usual way—the way the decadent muse usually did it. Writing late at night in bed with coffee and cigarettesThere’d been an army base—down in the Deep South once where a murder took place during a scandalous affair between an officer, his wife and a young enlisted man. Rumors of adultery, voyeurism and even worse... homosexuality had tainted the seemingly boring, peacetime barracks back then.But even worse there’d been—something else. The taint of forbidden fraternization between an officer and a young handsome enlisted man as well.But there were also rumors of something much worse, profane and hushed-up—male nudity and obscene nude horseback riding in the woods around the base. The young soldier was seen buck-naked and bareback riding. How exquisitely alluring to the Captain who saw it...and wanted it.

But since when was that news—in the indecent decadent Deep South? Since when had there not been—such scandalous Faulknerian innuendo?

______________THE PRUSSIAN OFFICER“The orderly was a youthof about twenty-two”—D. H. LawrenceThe Prussian OfficerWho can really say what’s really reflected in the dark retina of the Peacock’s Golden Eye? Reflections of who we are—what we pretend to be?“The Prussian Officer”—by D. H. Lawrence. About males on the make—who love & hate themselves as only men can do...Carson McCullers communes—with the decadent male muse reflected in the golden eye. Her Deep South sensibility—sympathy for the male humid hothouse heartache down in the South.The love that didn’t and couldn't speak—speak its awful shame and shameless name. The unrequited sexuality of men thrown together, hushed up for years by Don’t Ask Don’t Tell. Covered up and censored by—vast Catholic Lesions of Decency and indecent Identity. All of which seems so—rather prurient, tacky & silly now.As if Straight sex and—and Hetero Marriage were somehow unspeakably historically utterly Divine. Needing to be protected somehow from—the dirty paws and rabid mobs of haughty homosexuals out there.Stuck in gay ghettos like rats—along with all the rest of the tacky unacceptable white-trash riff-raff.______________THE YOUNG ORDERLY—From D. H. Lawrence“The Prussian Officer”“medium height and well built” “There was something young and warm about him” “never to have thought only to have received life directly through the senses” “and straight from instinct” “something free and self-contained about him”“something in the young fellow’s movement” “the movement of his strong shoulders”“The escort’s youngvigorous unconsciouspresence”